- Apple and AMEX lift Berkshire
- Fisher’s tech holdings pay off
As we enter the final trading days of 2024 and tot up how our personal investments have done over the course of the year, analysts at CMC Markets (CMCX) have been looking at how the ‘gurus’ such as Warren Buffett have fared ahead of the release of their year-end 13-F filings.
For the record, every US-domiciled fund with more than $100 million of assets has to file a 13-F report each quarter as we explain here.
BERKSHIRE’S WINNING RUN CONTINUES
The big news at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B:NYSE) this year was Buffett’s decision to sell two thirds of his holding in iPhone-maker Apple (AAPL:NASDAQ) back in January.
Yet despite this sale, Apple was still Berkshire’s biggest holding by value at the end of September at 26% of the portfolio as the stock rode the AI (artificial intelligence) wave, and year-to-date the shares have chalked up a 70% gain.
Another of Buffett’s big holdings, credit card provider American Express (AXP:NYSE), performed better still with a gain of 112% so far this year making his stake worth more than $45 billion at current prices.
It hasn’t all been one-way traffic for Berkshire, however – a more recent position in Brazilian fintech Nu Holdings (NU:NYSE), which was trimmed by around a fifth between January and September, had almost doubled by the end of October in dollar terms but after a sharp sell-off is up 27% instead.
Also, Buffett held his hand up earlier in the year over the poor performance of media business Paramount Global (PARA:NASDAQ), which lost an estimated $1.5 billion, saying the investment was entirely his decision and ‘we lost quite a bit of money, that happens in this business too’.
TECH BETS PAY OFF
Billionaire investor Ken Fisher had a good year thanks to strong gains in technology stocks, including AI chip-maker Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) whose shares have risen 184% year-to-date.
Fisher also racked up big gains in Apple, Amazon.com (AMZN:NASDAQ), Meta Platforms (META:NASDAQ) and Oracle (ORCL:NYSE), but he missed out on even bigger gains in Palantir (PLTR:NASDAQ), which is up 377% this year, having sold out of the shares in the first quarter.
One firm which reaped the full benefit of Palantir’s extraordinary run was hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, set up by the legendary quant investor Jim Simons who is profiled in Gregory Zuckerman’s excellent book ‘The man who solved the market’.
Finally, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management had success with two large Asian technology companies, Singapore’s Sea Ltd (SE:NYSE) and Taiwan’s TSMC (TSM:NYSE), which have gained 183% and 99% in dollar terms respectively this year.
